Kilmar Abrego Garcia and the Trump Administration's Lies About His Gang Affiliation

The Bald-Faced Lies Are Criminal

Late yesterday, the DOJ filed their evidence in the Maryland District Court supporting their claim that Kilmar Abrego Garcia was a gang member.

Meanwhile, Attorney General Pam Bondi angrily and vociferously declared all over Fox News that not only is he a gang member, but he’s a terrorist, and a high-level leader of the gang.

(Trump Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt went further and said he was a human trafficker.)¹

Bondi is telling lies, and she knows it. She’s twisting the evidence for her unsuspecting audience at her boss’s behest.

So let me untwist it for you.

When Abrego Garcia was arrested in 2019, he was doing the typical loitering at a Home Depot for jobs that many undocumented laborers do.

(I grew up in Southern California and it was common knowledge that poor immigrants did this to survive. Such workers were considered safe enough for housewives to approach and take home for work, so nobody thought these were gang hangouts. Also, gang members don’t need to mow your lawn for $5 because they have money from their black market activities.)

Anyway, Maryland police arrested them for loitering. They decided Abrego Garcia was possibly a gang member based on him wearing a hoodie with US dollars graphics on it and a Chicago Bull’s hat.

One of the officers also claimed an anonymous informant said Abrego Garcia was a captain of a gang out of New York. That officer was fired a short time later for misconduct surrounding informants. The informant was never identified, nor did they testify. Further, Abrego Garcia had never been to New York.

Having not committed any Maryland crimes, Abrego Garcia was turned over to immigration. At a bond hearing, the immigration judge determined the hearsay statement by the police officer in the report was credible enough to deny bond. An appeals court agreed.

Now this is the important part: A bond hearing is not a determination of the evidence and merits. It’s just to decide whether someone should stay in custody while awaiting trial. Limited evidence is presented at this point, and neither the officer nor the informant testified or were cross-examined.

Bondi knows this, and yet she is shamelessly claiming a judge decided he was a gang member. That is literally untrue.

After that, there was a trial and the evidence was admitted and examined. At trial, the immigration judge decided there was no credible evidence that Abrego Garcia was part of any gang.

The judge went further and placed Abrego Garcia on protective (ie do not deport) status because he was actually a victim of gang violence in El Salvador as a child, which is why he came to the US (as a minor fleeing violence and being impressed against his will into a gang).²

Most immigrants do not win their protective status cases. This judge was convinced he was truly a victim and would be killed in El Salvador.

And knowing this, because it is in their files, the US sent an innocent Abrego Garcia to El Salvador, to be detained indefinitely, tortured, and murdered. And rather than admit it and be embarrassed, they are lying to the public about it. They threw this man’s life away for pride and politics.

There’s zero chance the district judge in Maryland is going to side with the Trump administration on this. While SCOTUS is less trustworthy in its willingness to rebuke Trump, they’ve repeatedly signaled that the administration is on thin ice legally and ought to save face now. [Update: The Fourth Circuit has also strongly suggested that the Executive Branch immediately right this wrong and not embarrass itself further.]

Sadly, Trump and his lieutenants are uninterested in doing the right thing. And this is just one of hundreds of stories coming out about the unjust and inhumane destruction of human lives across America. When some of these people die as a result, the Trump Administration, and all those who participated, will have committed murder.

Photo: Kilmar Abrego Garcia, whose case became a flashpoint for the profiling of immigrants based on sports apparel. (Abrego Garcia Family / via REUTERS)

This is a human being.

1. Anything the Trump administration accuses others of doing, is an admission of their own crimes. The over two hundred people it sent to a Salvadoran concentration camp without trial in a money exchange is actual human trafficking.

2. For context, it is important to understand the story of Mr. Abrego Garcia is a common one, and why his family sent him to the US for his safety. When the gangs of El Salvador overran their society, they terrorized a defenseless population. One of the things the gangs demanded was that adolescent boys be turned over—essentially, enslaved and forced to be gang members against their wills. They demanded Abrego Garcia and his brother be turned over. Instead, the family sent them (as boys) to the US.

Now consider that when you think about all the prisoners at CECOT. At least some of these young men were enslaved by the gangs, and are now imprisoned as punishment for their enslavement. Adding grotesque insult to injury, these victims of actual human trafficking are now held for life in a gulag so foul that it violates all international human rights standards.

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